Chapter XIIIn the course of the summer my wife and I paid our annual visit together to London, and I had a few days in Oxford before the end of the summer term.I heard a good deal about Vane-Cartwright in London, for he had become a man of some mark in society, and moved in a little set, which was known among its members by a rather precious name, now forgotten though celebrated in the gossip of that time, and which included a statesman or two of either party and several men of eminence in letters, law or learning. By a strange coincidence of the sort which is always happening, I met at an evening party a friend who mentioned Longhurst, and I had just heard from him something of no moment about this man whose fate so deeply exercised me, when I saw Vane-Cartwright himself standing in another part of the throng. I took the opportunity of watching him, unobserved myself, as I supposed. I have hitherto forborne to describe his appearance, because such descriptions in books seldom convey a picture to me. But I must say that seen now in a room where there were several distinguished people, he made no less impression on me than before. He was, I should say, five foot eleven in height, thin and with a slight stoop, but with the wiry look which sometimes belongs to men who were unathletic and perhaps delicate when young, but whose physical strength has developed in after years. Hair which had turned rather grey, while the soft texture and uniformly dark hue of his skin still retained a certain beauty of youth, probably accounted for a good deal of his distinction of appearance, for he was not handsome, though his forehead, if narrow, was high, and his eyes which were small were striking—of a dark greenish-grey colour, I think. The expression of the mouth and of the clear-cut and firm-set jaw was a good deal hidden by a long though rather thin moustache, still black. I had time while he stood there to notice again one trick, which I already knew; he was, I supposed, bent upon being agreeable, so he was talking with animation, and when, in so talking, he smiled and showed his white teeth, his eyelashes almost completely veiled his eyes. To me, naturally, it gave him a hateful expression, yet I could see a certain fascination about it. Then he moved farther off—very quietly, but I could see as he made his way through the crowd that in reality every motion was extraordinarily quick.Some ten minutes after, I was about to go, when he suddenly came from behind and addressed me, asking me to choose a day for dinner or luncheon at his club. I declined, and freed myself as courteously and as quickly as I could, and thought, for the moment, that there had been nothing marked in the way in which, obeying irresistible impulse, I had shaken off the man whom I suspected on such slight grounds but so rootedly.A few days afterwards a great robbery was attempted at Vane-Cartwright’s house. The robbers were after a well-chosen and valuable collection of gold ornaments of early periods or from strange countries, which he had begun to make. It was reported in the papers that the theft had been with great presence of mind interrupted and prevented by the owner of the ill-guarded treasures. But the robbers themselves got away. The matter was much talked of, and conflicting tales were told about it, but it seems that Vane-Cartwright, hearing some unusual noise, had come downstairs and surprised the two men who had entered the house before they had succeeded in removing any of their spoil. As he came down he had rung up the police by the District Messenger Company’s apparatus which was in the house. Coming quietly upon them, and standing in the dark while they were in full light, he had first ordered them to hold up their hands, and had then made each of them singly turn out his pockets and restore the smaller stolen articles which they had already secreted in them. He then, it was said, kept them standing there to await the police. But, by some ruse, they distracted his attention for a moment, and then, suddenly putting out their light, made a rush past him and escaped. Such at any rate appears to have been the information which he gave to the police who arrived soon after. The police actually arrested two men, already known to them as suspicious characters, who had been observed lurking near the house together and afterwards slinking away separately, and they were at first confident that they had secured the authors of the attempted robbery. But Vane-Cartwright not only could not identify the arrested men as the two housebreakers, whom he had of course seen well; he insisted firmly that they were not the men whom he had seen; nor were the right men ever caught. The matter caused some surprise, and the police were freely blamed for their bungling. I have my own reason for doubting whether they were justly blamed.It is a mere fancy on my part that this incident and my meeting with Vane-Cartwright a few days before may have had a connexion with each other and with certain subsequent events in this history. I fear that my experience in that year and the next has made me ready to see fanciful connexions; and the reader, when he knows of those subsequent events, will see what I suspect took place upon the discovery of the theft, but will very likely think my suspicion extravagant. However that may be, Vane-Cartwright’s plucky adventure and the celebrity which it helped to give to his artistic collections, caused me to hear all the more of him during my stay in London.Curiously, however, it was at Oxford, where he had not distinguished himself, that the fame of Vane-Cartwright was most dinned into my ears. The University is apt to be much interested in the comparatively few of her sons whose road to distinction is through commerce; and, moreover, he had lately given to the University Museum a valuable collection of East Indian weapons, fabrics, musical instruments and what not, which he had got together with much judgment. Thus it happened that I heard there one or two things about him which were of interest to me. A friend of mine, an old tutor, the Bursar of the college at which Vane-Cartwright had been, described him as he was in his undergraduate days. He had, in his opinion, been badly brought up, had never gone to school, but been trained at home by parents who were good people with peculiar views, highly scientific and possibly highly moral views. He had not fallen into either of the two common classes of undergraduates which my old friend understood and approved—the sportsmanlike and boyishly fashionable class, or the studious class who studied on the ordinary lines; still less into the smaller, but still not small, class which combines the merits of the two. He had attainments of his own, which the old tutor did not value sufficiently, for he was proficient in several modern languages and modern literatures; moreover, the necessary mathematics, Greek and Latin grammar, formal logic, etc., which he had to get up, gave him not the slightest trouble. Altogether he had plenty of cleverness of his own sort, but it was a sort which the Bursar thought unwholesome. He was quite well conducted, and ought to have been a gentleman, coming of the family of which he came, but somehow he was not quite a gentleman. Thus it was a great surprise to the possibly conventional instructor of his youth that he had done so well in the world.Then I heard of him from another man, justly esteemed in financial circles, who was on a visit to his son at Oxford, and whom I met in a common-room after dinner. Somebody had hazarded the remark that Vane-Cartwright must have been either a very hard worker or a very lucky speculator. “No,” said this gentleman, who was a colleague of his on the Board of one of the only two companies of which he was a director, “I should not say that a man like that worked hard as you would understand work at Oxford, or at least as a few of you would. His hard work was done when he was young. Most of his business is what one of his clerks could run, and probably does run, for many weeks together, on lines which he has planned very carefully and revises whenever occasion requires. Nor is he what most people would call a speculator. I fancy he very seldom takes any uncommon sort of risk, but he always does it at the right moment. He has succeeded because he is very quick in making his calculations and very bold in taking action on them. He does not seem to be constantly watching things, but when a special emergency or a special opportunity occurs he seems to grasp it instantly, and I believe he troubles himself very little, too little perhaps, about any affair of his when it is once well in train.”Lastly, I heard a story, the narrator of which could give me few precise details, of the pains which Vane-Cartwright had taken to search out the few relations of an old partner of his in the East who had died before their affairs turned out so successfully, and of the generosity with which he had set up these people in life though they had very little claim on him. Here at least was something which took its place in the story which I was weaving; the rest of what I had heard was little to the purpose, though it served to give life and colour to my idea of the man’s character.Now, however, I was really to discover something definite. When we returned to our home at Long Wilton, only a little before we finally left it, I completed my examination of Peters’ papers. His various diaries and notebooks, notes of travel and notes of study, jottings and completed passages for his psychological book, I found to be of fascinating interest, and I lingered over them long, but there was not a hint among them all of Longhurst, theEleanoror any kindred topic. One of the journals, I noticed, had had some leaves cut out. The last place of my search was a small wooden trunk which I had brought home from his house (now sold). On the top of it lay a sheet of paper with, written in his mother’s hand, “Some little things which I have put aside for Eustace. His wife or his children may care to see them hereafter.” It may have been from a false sense of pathos, but my eyes filled with tears, and I was indisposed to rifle callously these relics so lovingly put aside with natural hopes which now could never be fulfilled. I was about to make a bonfire of the box and all its contents, reverently but with speed, when my wife arrested me in amazement at my folly. “Why,” she said, “cannot you see? His letters to his mother will be in it.” “His letters from the East,” she added, as I still did not comprehend. And they were in it.
In the course of the summer my wife and I paid our annual visit together to London, and I had a few days in Oxford before the end of the summer term.
I heard a good deal about Vane-Cartwright in London, for he had become a man of some mark in society, and moved in a little set, which was known among its members by a rather precious name, now forgotten though celebrated in the gossip of that time, and which included a statesman or two of either party and several men of eminence in letters, law or learning. By a strange coincidence of the sort which is always happening, I met at an evening party a friend who mentioned Longhurst, and I had just heard from him something of no moment about this man whose fate so deeply exercised me, when I saw Vane-Cartwright himself standing in another part of the throng. I took the opportunity of watching him, unobserved myself, as I supposed. I have hitherto forborne to describe his appearance, because such descriptions in books seldom convey a picture to me. But I must say that seen now in a room where there were several distinguished people, he made no less impression on me than before. He was, I should say, five foot eleven in height, thin and with a slight stoop, but with the wiry look which sometimes belongs to men who were unathletic and perhaps delicate when young, but whose physical strength has developed in after years. Hair which had turned rather grey, while the soft texture and uniformly dark hue of his skin still retained a certain beauty of youth, probably accounted for a good deal of his distinction of appearance, for he was not handsome, though his forehead, if narrow, was high, and his eyes which were small were striking—of a dark greenish-grey colour, I think. The expression of the mouth and of the clear-cut and firm-set jaw was a good deal hidden by a long though rather thin moustache, still black. I had time while he stood there to notice again one trick, which I already knew; he was, I supposed, bent upon being agreeable, so he was talking with animation, and when, in so talking, he smiled and showed his white teeth, his eyelashes almost completely veiled his eyes. To me, naturally, it gave him a hateful expression, yet I could see a certain fascination about it. Then he moved farther off—very quietly, but I could see as he made his way through the crowd that in reality every motion was extraordinarily quick.
Some ten minutes after, I was about to go, when he suddenly came from behind and addressed me, asking me to choose a day for dinner or luncheon at his club. I declined, and freed myself as courteously and as quickly as I could, and thought, for the moment, that there had been nothing marked in the way in which, obeying irresistible impulse, I had shaken off the man whom I suspected on such slight grounds but so rootedly.
A few days afterwards a great robbery was attempted at Vane-Cartwright’s house. The robbers were after a well-chosen and valuable collection of gold ornaments of early periods or from strange countries, which he had begun to make. It was reported in the papers that the theft had been with great presence of mind interrupted and prevented by the owner of the ill-guarded treasures. But the robbers themselves got away. The matter was much talked of, and conflicting tales were told about it, but it seems that Vane-Cartwright, hearing some unusual noise, had come downstairs and surprised the two men who had entered the house before they had succeeded in removing any of their spoil. As he came down he had rung up the police by the District Messenger Company’s apparatus which was in the house. Coming quietly upon them, and standing in the dark while they were in full light, he had first ordered them to hold up their hands, and had then made each of them singly turn out his pockets and restore the smaller stolen articles which they had already secreted in them. He then, it was said, kept them standing there to await the police. But, by some ruse, they distracted his attention for a moment, and then, suddenly putting out their light, made a rush past him and escaped. Such at any rate appears to have been the information which he gave to the police who arrived soon after. The police actually arrested two men, already known to them as suspicious characters, who had been observed lurking near the house together and afterwards slinking away separately, and they were at first confident that they had secured the authors of the attempted robbery. But Vane-Cartwright not only could not identify the arrested men as the two housebreakers, whom he had of course seen well; he insisted firmly that they were not the men whom he had seen; nor were the right men ever caught. The matter caused some surprise, and the police were freely blamed for their bungling. I have my own reason for doubting whether they were justly blamed.
It is a mere fancy on my part that this incident and my meeting with Vane-Cartwright a few days before may have had a connexion with each other and with certain subsequent events in this history. I fear that my experience in that year and the next has made me ready to see fanciful connexions; and the reader, when he knows of those subsequent events, will see what I suspect took place upon the discovery of the theft, but will very likely think my suspicion extravagant. However that may be, Vane-Cartwright’s plucky adventure and the celebrity which it helped to give to his artistic collections, caused me to hear all the more of him during my stay in London.
Curiously, however, it was at Oxford, where he had not distinguished himself, that the fame of Vane-Cartwright was most dinned into my ears. The University is apt to be much interested in the comparatively few of her sons whose road to distinction is through commerce; and, moreover, he had lately given to the University Museum a valuable collection of East Indian weapons, fabrics, musical instruments and what not, which he had got together with much judgment. Thus it happened that I heard there one or two things about him which were of interest to me. A friend of mine, an old tutor, the Bursar of the college at which Vane-Cartwright had been, described him as he was in his undergraduate days. He had, in his opinion, been badly brought up, had never gone to school, but been trained at home by parents who were good people with peculiar views, highly scientific and possibly highly moral views. He had not fallen into either of the two common classes of undergraduates which my old friend understood and approved—the sportsmanlike and boyishly fashionable class, or the studious class who studied on the ordinary lines; still less into the smaller, but still not small, class which combines the merits of the two. He had attainments of his own, which the old tutor did not value sufficiently, for he was proficient in several modern languages and modern literatures; moreover, the necessary mathematics, Greek and Latin grammar, formal logic, etc., which he had to get up, gave him not the slightest trouble. Altogether he had plenty of cleverness of his own sort, but it was a sort which the Bursar thought unwholesome. He was quite well conducted, and ought to have been a gentleman, coming of the family of which he came, but somehow he was not quite a gentleman. Thus it was a great surprise to the possibly conventional instructor of his youth that he had done so well in the world.
Then I heard of him from another man, justly esteemed in financial circles, who was on a visit to his son at Oxford, and whom I met in a common-room after dinner. Somebody had hazarded the remark that Vane-Cartwright must have been either a very hard worker or a very lucky speculator. “No,” said this gentleman, who was a colleague of his on the Board of one of the only two companies of which he was a director, “I should not say that a man like that worked hard as you would understand work at Oxford, or at least as a few of you would. His hard work was done when he was young. Most of his business is what one of his clerks could run, and probably does run, for many weeks together, on lines which he has planned very carefully and revises whenever occasion requires. Nor is he what most people would call a speculator. I fancy he very seldom takes any uncommon sort of risk, but he always does it at the right moment. He has succeeded because he is very quick in making his calculations and very bold in taking action on them. He does not seem to be constantly watching things, but when a special emergency or a special opportunity occurs he seems to grasp it instantly, and I believe he troubles himself very little, too little perhaps, about any affair of his when it is once well in train.”
Lastly, I heard a story, the narrator of which could give me few precise details, of the pains which Vane-Cartwright had taken to search out the few relations of an old partner of his in the East who had died before their affairs turned out so successfully, and of the generosity with which he had set up these people in life though they had very little claim on him. Here at least was something which took its place in the story which I was weaving; the rest of what I had heard was little to the purpose, though it served to give life and colour to my idea of the man’s character.
Now, however, I was really to discover something definite. When we returned to our home at Long Wilton, only a little before we finally left it, I completed my examination of Peters’ papers. His various diaries and notebooks, notes of travel and notes of study, jottings and completed passages for his psychological book, I found to be of fascinating interest, and I lingered over them long, but there was not a hint among them all of Longhurst, theEleanoror any kindred topic. One of the journals, I noticed, had had some leaves cut out. The last place of my search was a small wooden trunk which I had brought home from his house (now sold). On the top of it lay a sheet of paper with, written in his mother’s hand, “Some little things which I have put aside for Eustace. His wife or his children may care to see them hereafter.” It may have been from a false sense of pathos, but my eyes filled with tears, and I was indisposed to rifle callously these relics so lovingly put aside with natural hopes which now could never be fulfilled. I was about to make a bonfire of the box and all its contents, reverently but with speed, when my wife arrested me in amazement at my folly. “Why,” she said, “cannot you see? His letters to his mother will be in it.” “His letters from the East,” she added, as I still did not comprehend. And they were in it.